January 7, 2015

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Cheese in Destiny

by Andreas Schaefer

Datto and others started to call certain hiding spots in Destiny cheese spots meaning that it safer but less exiting way to handle a fight. When Bungie released the first DLC called The Dark Below the word cheese started to morph into the description for exploiting a glitch in the system to change the mechanics of the game so that it is easier to handle. In the raid Crota’s End warlocks could use self-resurrection to pass the bridge without having a sword or to deal with sword bearer or using the host’s quitting of the Game to make Crota kneel “forever”.

Update: Later I say that DLC gear is not giving Radiant Shards / Energy when dismantled. That is not true for Raid Gear though but for any DLC gear (Lvl 36 for Armor) that is obtained otherwise.

In my book a cheese is the exploit of a glitch to change the game mechanics to make it easier and faster to beat.The problem with that is that it comprises the game because raid gear is earned unfairly and it makes it also harder to find a group of people to do it without a cheese. I admit that I did the cheese but mostly because the group was not patient enough to finish without. That said I really want to do it the intendet way without any shortcuts. Some players started to refer a regular play style as legit but I don’t do that because I don’t consider the cheese as illegal way to play the game.

Because of the new and negative meaning of the word cheese I don’t consider any evasion of enemies as cheese anymore – is it now a hiding spot, running past the enemies (beginning of Winter Run or Scourge of Winter), standing above the enemies (Nexus), hanging back or using a wipe to relocate (Start of Templar Fight on VoG).

There are few reasons why I don’t consider them as cheese:

I cannot draw a line where it is or isn’t a cheese (the lines are blurry)

Bungie knows about them and could fix them if the wanted to

Because Destiny is an Investment Game recreational gamers need to choose wisely where to invest their time to beat a mission, strike or raid.

I think Bungie is aware of the players’ time constraints and because they want to have a broad appeal they seem to fine with chat. For example on the Nexus boss fight Bungie could spawn Pretorian faster as the game progresses to avoid players to “park” above Nexus.

Now Datto suggested that Bungie should add doors to the game but I think the game would loose some of its open area feel appeal even though they used that in certain places like Scourge of Winter or Siege of Warmind boss fights.

Conclusion

I hope and expect that Bungie fixes the cheeses in Crota but I also expect them to fix some of the other issues I encountered like that I need Radiant Shards / Energy to level up Raid Gear but I only receive Ascendant Shards / Energy when I dismantle them. Lately Ascendant Shards became quite useless because all of my characters are on level 31 but I am stuck there because I am missing the required Radiant stuff.